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It’s a Miracle.
How many times do you hear that in relevant media? It often comes along with a tale of infertility and a vast number of procedures, pills and needles. Most often it results in the birth of multiples that get their 15 minutes of fame on the news.
Why is it that people attribute science that has been perfected since 1978 to a miracle.
The first “test tube baby”, Louise Brown, was born July 25th 1978. The research that helped her come into being had been in the making for over a decade. Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe, not only pioneered the process, but were there for the delivery. It’s since been made easier with a greater delivery rate.
The second child born to IVF was a boy, Alastair MacDonald. Being the second he wasn’t highly publicized and has managed to live a life out of the limelight. He was the result of a single embryo being implanted. Something that doesn’t happen often now a days. Flash freezing of eggs and embryos allows a larger amount to be saved and implanted. Some women think the more you implant the more of a chance you will have to get one.
While this is true, it also leads to “Miracles.” Highly publicized cases are paraded on TV for our amusement. (Or in my case, hatred. I hate Kate so much.) Earlier cases like the Dilley Sextuplets and the the McCaughey septuplets are now just a memory as the novelty has worn off and Octuplets are now in vogue.
They opt out of selective reduction usually choosing to “leave it in God’s hands.” You know like they did with their fertility problem.
February 25th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Personally I don’t mind people having multiple babies, as long as they are capable, and willing to support them in their life. If you can’t support them, you shouldn’t have them. We all know tha the world is not only overpopulated, but there are plenty of children that don’t have homes as is. We don’t need more being taken from parents that are incapable of caring for them.
Just because you can be made into a baby factory, doesn’t mean you should.
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
1) I hate Kate too. Goddamn it Jon needs to escape.
2) Leaving it in God’s hands? Like the Duggars. 18 children! I have no idea what that father does (since the mother is homeschooling the children all day and doesn’t work) but I can’t imagine how they can afford everything. Besides, the mother must be, what, 44 by now? The risk of a Downs Syndrome baby jumps after 35, and grows exponentially after 40. I can only hope they either stop having children or stop adopting.
People seem to run extremes sometimes. People who hate babies and children, and people who adore them.
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:54 pm
He’s a real estate agent/ they own several properties that they get rent from.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:30 am
It’s like that with a lot of things in life, I imagen. Science and all its children (medicine, technology, enginering), no pun intended, have given rise to new “standards” that people become complacent and bored with, so to prove it is still valuable in our lifes (and therefore worth spending our money on), it has to continually look for a “Wow” moment to keep us interested.
I remember after Katrina hit New Orleans there was a period of time, three or four weeks, where the top stories in the Health Section of CNN.com were about couples trying desperately to get enough money together to pay for one last fertility treatment before their frozen embryoes in the now power-less hospitals thawed out and how expensive these treatments are and how desperate and heart broken these families were. I’m not sure how I felt about that tactic, because I wasn’t sure for whom the “Wow” moment was: Fertility Programs or the Katrina Victims.
Also, the media’s “miracle baby” for that disaster was conceived by and born to a couple in their 40s who still had their jobs and home and all ready had a 2 year old (conceived through in vitro), who decided “eh, why not have another” when they learned their “back-up” embryos from the first attempt were thawing out. It was the non-shalant “eh, why not” that erked me, especially knowning there were couples in the program still trying for their first child who would never get it because they had no money, no job, and no home.
A baby born to one of those couples would have truly been a miracle.
~~ Abe
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
My personal feel on this is basically, every pregnancy is a miracle in some way. Every woman who goes through it touches on the very essense of the divine. However, I see woman like Octomom abusing her reproductive abilities. These families who go to such trouble to have massive familes just bother me. I guess I’m an anti-natalist, I don’t think we humans should be populating the world at such high rates anymore. First of all, we’ll run out of room eventually, and second, the more people their are, the potential for more wars, more criminals, etc. Also, girls who get pregnant and then just keep their child and ignore it, or just pawn it off on someone else, that pissing me off, take responsibility for your sexual actions. I guess I’m just mister negative on that view, sorry.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Don’t hate the Gosselins, just because they are attention whores. Hate the Duggars. I DESPISE the Duggars. 18 fucking kids all with names that start with ‘J’